On October
6, 1973 — Yom Kippur, the holiest
day in the Jewish calendar — Egypt and Syria
opened a coordinated surprise attack against Israel.
The equivalent
of the total forces of NATO in Europe was mobilized
on Israel’s borders.1 On the Golan Heights, approximately
180 Israeli tanks faced an onslaught of 1,400 Syrian
tanks. Along the Suez Canal, fewer than 500 Israeli
defenders were attacked by 80,000 Egyptians.

Thrown
onto the defensive during the first two days of fighting,
Israel mobilized its reserves and eventually repulsed
the invaders and carried the war deep into Syria and
Egypt. The Arab states were swiftly resupplied by sea
and air from the Soviet Union, which rejected United
States efforts to work toward an immediate cease­fire.
As a result, the United States belatedly began its
own airlift to Israel. Two weeks later, Egypt was
saved from a disastrous defeat by the UN Security Council, which
had failed to act while the tide was in the Arabs’ favor.

The Soviet Union
showed no interest in initiating peacemaking efforts
while it looked like the Arabs might win. The same
was true for UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

On October 22, the Security Council
adopted Resolution 338 calling for “all
parties to the present fighting to cease all firing
and terminate all military activity immediately.” The
vote came on the day that Israeli forces cut off
and isolated the Egyptian Third Army and were in
a position to destroy it.2

Despite the Israel Defense
Forces' ultimate success on the battlefield,
the war was considered a diplomatic and military
failure. A total of 2,688 Israeli soldiers were
killed.

MYTH

“Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat had agreed to
U.S. peace proposals and did not seek war.”

FACT

In 1971, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat raised the
possibility of signing an agreement with Israel,
provided that all the occupieddisputed territories were
returned by the Israelis. No progress
toward peace was made, however, so, the following
year, Sadat said war was inevitable and he was prepared
to sacrifice one million soldiers in the showdown
with Israel.3 His threat did not materialize
that year.

Throughout 1972, and for much of
1973, Sadat threatened war unless the United States
forced Israel to accept his interpretation of Resolution 242 — total
Israeli withdrawal from territories taken in 1967.

Simultaneously, the Egyptian leader
carried on a diplomatic offensive among European
and African states to win support for his cause.
He appealed to the Soviets to bring pressure on the
United States and to provide Egypt with more offensive
weapons to cross the Suez Canal. The Soviet Union
was more interested in maintaining the appearance
of détente with the United States than in
confrontation in the Middle East; therefore, it rejected
Sadat’s demands. Sadat’s response was to abruptly expel
approximately 20,000 Soviet advisers from Egypt.

In an April 1973 interview, Sadat
again warned he would renew the war with Israel.4 But it was the same threat
he had made in 1971 and 1972, and most observers
remained skeptical.

The United States agreed with Israel's
view that Egypt should engage in direct negotiations.
The U.S.-sponsored truce was three-years-old and
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had
opened a new dialogue for peace at the UN. Almost
everyone was confident the prospect of a new war
was remote.

Sadat reacted acidly
to Kissinger’s initiative:

The United States is still under Zionist pressure. The glasses the
United States is wearing on its eyes are entirely Zionist glasses,
completely blind to everything except what Israel wants. We do not accept
this.5

“All countries should wage
war against the Zionists, who are there
to destroy all human organizations and
to destroy civilization and the work
which good people are trying to do.”

At least nine Arab
states, including four non-Middle Eastern nations,
actively aided the Egyptian-Syrian war effort.

A few months before the Yom Kippur War, Iraq
transferred a squadron of Hunter jets to Egypt. During
the war, an Iraqi division of some 18,000 men and
several hundred tanks was deployed in the central
Golan and participated in the October 16 attack against
Israeli positions.7 Iraqi MiGs began operating
over the Golan Heights as early as October 8, the
third day of the war.

Besides serving as financial underwriters,
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait committed men to battle.
A Saudi brigade of approximately 3,000 troops was
dispatched to Syria, where it participated in fighting
along the approaches to Damascus. Also, violating
Paris’s ban on the transfer of French-made
weapons, Libya sent Mirage fighters to Egypt (from
1971-1973, Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi gave
Cairo more than $1 billion in aid to rearm Egypt
and to pay the Soviets for weapons delivered).8

Other North
African countries responded to Arab and Soviet calls
to aid the front­line states. Algeria sent three
aircraft squadrons of fighters and bombers, an armored
brigade and 150 tanks. Approximately 1,000-2,000
Tunisian soldiers were positioned in the Nile Delta.
The Sudan stationed 3,500 troops in southern Egypt,
and Morocco sent three brigades to the front lines,
including 2,500 men to Syria.

Lebanese radar units were used by
Syrian air defense forces. Lebanon also allowed Palestinian
terrorists to shell Israeli civilian settlements
from its territory. Palestinians fought on the Southern
Front with the Egyptians and Kuwaitis.9

Theleast enthusiastic participant in the October fighting was probably Jordan's King Hussein, who
apparently had been kept uninformed of Egyptian
and Syrian war plans. But Hussein did send two
of his best units — the
40th and 60th Armored Brigades — to
Syria. This force took positions in the southern
sector, defending the main Amman-Damascus route
and attacking Israeli positions along the Kuneitra-Sassa
road on October 16. Three Jordanian artillery batteries
also participated in the assault, carried out by
nearly 100 tanks.10

Syrian Minister
of Defense Mustafa Tlas told the Syrian National
Assembly in December 1973 of the following
example of "supreme valor" by
Syrian troops:

“There
is the outstanding case of a recruit
from Aleppo who murdered 28 Jewish soldiers
all by himself, slaughtering them like
sheep. All of his comrades in arms witnessed
this. He butchered three of them with an
ax and decapitated them....He struggled
face to face with one of them and throwing
down his ax managed to break his neck and
devour his flesh in front of his comrades.
This is a special case. Need I single it
out to award him the Medal of the Republic.
I will grant this medal to any soldier
who succeeds in killing 28 Jews, and I
will cover him with appreciation and honor
his bravery.”11